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Friday, December 24, 2010

This time-honored holiday is again at hand, and many stockings, we opine, will be hung to-night with light hearts and tiny hands for presents rich, which the old man with the reindeer and sledge [sic] has for time out of mind had credit for bringing.

Christmas, the most widely observed, perhaps, of all holidays, is to the children of Christendom an event fraught with peculiar interest and happiness. In the minds of them it is connected with visions of sugar candy, mince pies, and other sweetmeats too tedious to mention; and in large cities, perhaps, with hopes of a visit to the "Christmas Tree" — an institution which we admire.

Nor are the "children of a larger growth" indifferent to the advent of Christmas day, as the avidity with which they swallow glasses of egg-nogg abundantly bears witness to. Indeed, in the minds of Americans the idea of Christmas and egg-nogg are utterly inseparable, albeit that of egg-nogg and Christmas are not.

Our greatest poet has not failed to notice this beautiful trait in our nationality, as may be seen from the following verse:

He that on Christmas day

hath no egg-nogg in himself,Nor is not moved

by a bowl of this sweet beverage,Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

The motions of his spirits

are dull as night,And his affections dark as Erebus:Let no such man be trusted.